


Tonight, the Scariest

by Penelopiad



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Autumn, Halloween, Haunted Houses, M/M, Real Hockey Bros Hold Hands Ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 01:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2409734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penelopiad/pseuds/Penelopiad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Jonny just thought—he doesn’t know anymore. He thought it’d be a couple of badly dressed volunteers making ghost sounds at them with maybe a stop where they have to plunge their hands in a bowl of peeled grapes and pretend they’re touching eyes. Ew. OMG. So gross. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>Whatever.</i>
</p><p> <i>Instead, he got this.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Tonight, the Scariest

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little silly something to get me out of my writing rut. Hockey fic is still so difficult to write and new for me and I have too many WIPs/ideas that I can't seem to finish/start. But this is finished! And It's seasonal and everything!
> 
> written for thenorthface & oops_ohdear handholding ficathon  
> First posted on tumblr.
> 
> thanks to claudine for the prompt/idea/brainstorm & kylezy for the quick read-through
> 
>  **title from** : _Anything Can Happen On Halloween_ by Tim Curry  >_>  
>  **warning-ish:** there's a lot of swearing

 

 

Look. Jonny just doesn’t like it, okay? It’s perfectly normal not to like it. Perfectly understandable. A normal human reaction. Absolutely, completely, 100% _normal_.

“It’s normal,” he says.

“You’re scared,” Pat says behind him. It’s not a question. There’s glee in his voice. If he could see Pat’s face right now, Jonny knows there’d be that douchey smile he makes—kinda surprised, kinda delighted, a whole lot smug—all over it. 

“Shut up.”

“You are, so, so scared.”

Jonny’s gonna punch him. 

“I just—it’s— _ugh_.”

Jonny leans against the wall in the corner where they stopped because he refused to go around it. Something’s there, he knows, something’s gonna jump out from fucking nowhere, right in front of him, and—fuck this shit, who even thought this was a good idea.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, tries to calm his nerves, to settle himself, steady and sure, the way he’d do before a game. 

He’s a grownass man for fuck’s sake. A goddamn professional hockey player. A superstar. He can fucking do this.

This is _normal_. 

Trying to calm himself right now, though, works as well as trying to ask him to not want to annihilate the Canucks every chance he gets. All he can hear is horrid music coming through the speakers of the house: witch-cackle and 50s B-series horror movie villain laughter. 

Pat pokes him in the side.

“Are you gonna faint, man?”

Jonny opens his eyes and glares at him. Pat’s face is half in shadows, half lit by a sickening green coming from the side. He looks ridiculous and butt-ugly and it makes Jonny feel marginally better.

“Fuck you, I’m not gonna faint.”

“Seems to me like you’re gonna.”

“I am not. Going. To faint. Jesus Christ.”

Pat shrugs and settles himself against the wall beside Jonny—his body warm along Jonny’s arm and thigh—elbows him like they’re sharing a fucking joke here. It’s not a joke. Nothing about this is _funny_.

“I don’t know. People faint sometimes when they’re scared. Or pee their pants,” he says, and Jonny hears the thud of his head hitting the wall, looks down to see Pat looking back at him with mocking wide eyes as he says “Are you gonna pee your pants, Jonny?” 

Jonny groans and pushes off the wall, turns the corner before he can overthink it and comes face to face with a skeleton falling from the ceiling—shaky plastic limbs and fake tarantula stuck to its forehead. It’s not even fucking realistic.

“Wow, man. That was—” Pat starts.

“Shut up.”

“No, I mean. You sounded like my cousin the first time he saw—”

“Kaner, I swear to god…”

“He’s five, Jonny. My cousin. Five. You sounded just like him. Scarily so.”

Jonny doesn’t answer, just rubs his face with his hands, clears his throat, rough and broken. 

He just thought—he doesn’t know anymore. He thought it’d be a couple of badly dressed volunteers making ghost sounds at them with maybe a stop where they have to plunge their hands in a bowl of peeled grapes and pretend they’re touching eyes. Ew. OMG. So gross. 

Whatever.

Instead, he got this.

Somebody somewhere got a bit too zealous. Somebody somewhere has a strange fucking hobby. Somebody somewhere is a fucking asshole.

His nerves are all fired up. He can feel himself being twitchy, on edge. Just knowing there’s going to be a next one, but not knowing when...

He jumps when Pat puts his hand on his arm and says, “Hey, man. You okay?” with a real look of concern in his eyes even if his mouth’s still half-smiling. 

“I just don’t like—I have a problem with...” Jonny waves his hand in front of him.

“Skeletons?”

“Getting startled.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, whatever. Let’s just—Let’s just go. Get the fuck out of here.” 

Jonny walks around the skeleton with purpose into the long corridor past it, strobe light flashing on a slow setting over the bare, black walls and the fake spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling. Ahead, they hear a high-pitched scream, followed by laughter, and Jonny’s reminded this is supposed to be _fun_. He feels weird with it, sort of ridiculous and childish.

Pat catches up to him, takes a few steps alongside him, matching his pace. Jonny looks sideways at him, the lights flickering over his face and shoulders, sort of mesmerizing in their choppiness—the angular, contrasting way his features and body move, cut into bright white planes and dark shadows. 

When it happens again, Jonny’s already half-turned toward Pat and doesn’t scream. He bites the edge of his tongue, too hard maybe, but refrains from sounding like Pat’s five year old cousin. Small mercies.

“Bro,” Pat says when they’ve reached the end of the corridor. “Jonny. I got this. Just hold my hand.”

Jonny scratches at his chest where it feels like his heart wants to make a run for it. Fuck. He hates the anticipation, the way it creeps inside him, settles right on his nerve endings and won’t let go.

Pat holds his right hand, palm up, in the space between them while more witch-cackle and ghost-whispers fill the air.

“I’m not holding your hand, Kaner.” Jesus, he’s not a child.

“It’ll make you feel better.”

“No.”

“It’s okay, man. No shame in being scared.”

Jonny snorts. That’s fucking rich coming from someone who was almost gleeful at the idea of Jonny fainting like a Victorian maiden only five minutes ago.

“You’re the fucking worse,” he says. “And I’m not scared.”

“Dude. You’re a little bit scared.” Pat wiggles his fingers. “Come on, Jonny. No one will know.”

“ _I_ will know, asshole.”

Pat sighs and drops his hand but stays close to Jonny as they turn another corner, Jonny fully prepared for it this time and yet. 

And yet.

Fucking vampires, man. 

“Oh come on!” Jonny says. “It doesn’t even look fucking real.” He gives a shuddery breath, licks his lips, then scratches at his cheek. “Let’s just—” He clear his throat, voice broken and too high. He’s never going to live this down.

As they make their way into the next room, Pat’s fingers brush against Jonny’s, close as he is to his side, his shoulder brushing Jonny’s arm too, his plaid shirt a puke-worthy colour under the yellow neon light falling from the lintel of the door. Pat’s hair and skin look pasty and sickly and he has fake spider web stuck to his head.

Jonny’s so distracted by it, mid-movement to pick it off Pat’s hair, he doesn’t realise at first when Pat grabs at his other hand. He doesn’t link their fingers, just holds on to the tips of Jonny’s middle and ring fingers with his own, an easy grip Jonny could shake off.

“Just go with it, man,” Pat says with a smile, dimple right in place.

Fine. _Fine_. Fucking fine.

“Just don’t—”

“I won’t tell, promise. Scout’s honor.”

“You’ve never been in the boy scouts, dumbass.”

“It’s like, a code of boyhood or some shit. Everyone knows that. It means something.”

“Whatever.”

Pat parrots him, then says, “We’re almost at the end, come on,” and drags Jonny by his fingers.

In Jonny’s defence, no one, absolutely no one in their fucking right mind, likes clowns. _No one._

So he grabbed at Pat’s hand. So he held on too hard. So what. _There was a goddamn, murderous clown_. In his face.

“I love you man,” Pat says once they’re past the evil incarnate wrapped in a polka-dotted onesie and a red wing—a mockery of all that is joyous and carefree about childhood. “But these hands are a fucking national treasure, okay? Try not to break them.” He shifts his hand in Jonny’s grip, getting more comfortable.

“Shut up. You offered, so deal.”

“I’m just saying. You don’t want to explain to Bowman why his best forward can’t play.”

Jonny sputters. “Best—What? _Best forward?_ ”

“You heard me.”

“Jesus, you’re so—”

“Look, there’s the exit. Your nightmare’s over.”

So Jonny lets Patrick pull him toward the backdoor, lets Patrick link their fingers together more firmly. Lets him push him against the wall to avoid a fall of plastic bats. Lets himself enjoy the warmth of Patrick all over him, solid and hard in the dark with his laughter close to Jonny’s ear, wet puffs of air against his jaw. Lets himself be dragged by the hand until they both come out of the stuffy house, right into the chilly October air, witch-laughter following at their heels.

And Jonny’s not even too sad when Pat lets go of his hand, just turns his face into the cold breeze and takes a deep breath, smells of dead leaves and damp earth filling his lungs—calming, settling.

So when Pat touches Jonny’s wrist with his fingers and says “Let’s grab a beer,” Jonny nods and follows. He keeps Pat close to his side and counts the number of times he knocks the back of his hand with his.

Pat looks at him sideways. “Clowns? Really?”

“I fucking hate you.”

 

 


End file.
